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Sunday Ramblings & Considerations: 01.08.12

In this edition: we feature the work of Australia’s Oliver Tank, discover Local Hero, plus our weekly considerations and videos.

Artist Feature: Oliver Tank

Last month, we featured Guerre who records on Yes Please! records. The holidays got in the way of featuring his label mate, Oliver Tank. Out of Sydney, Oliver is a dreamwave artist who released his Dreams EP back in November through Bandcamp. NPRmentioned Tank along with five other artists in a post about the gems one can find on music distribution platforms like Bandcamp and SoundCloud. Way to be timely, NPR.

Regardless, Dreams is full of ambient downtempo synthesizer with Tank singing softly over carefully measured tones and beats. It’s entrancing, and great if you need to come down from a tough day. You can pay what you want for Dreams on Bandcamp (link below). We’ve also posted Past, Present, Future, which was recorded live on FBi radio in New South Wales.

Check out:Past, Present, Future [stream]

Download:Dreams [Bandcamp]

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Discover: Local Hero!

The boy-girl interplay on Local Hero‘s Lady Wisconsin is enticingly sweet indie pop. The boys added multi-instrumentalist Maya Laner this fall, and she’s already paying dividends. In September, this quartet from Berkeley, California released the Aldgate EP via Bandcamp.

There’s a Beatles meets Vampire Weekend vibe to Aldgate. Full of fun, jangly pop songs, Local Hero keeps it light and entertaining.

Started under the cover of darkness in a parking lot abundant in poison ivy, golden sneakers, and the smells of Mexican food, Good Morning: The American Inn Projectended less than 24 hours before developers ground up the entire lot. Eight years after The American Inn itself was demolished to prevent squatters from taking up residence in its abandoned rooms, the motel sign—still dutifully announcing “_ightly & _eekly rates”—was liberated by Lexington artists Kurt Gohde and Kremena Todorova. In the course of five months, Gohde and Todorova visited the sign daily, capturing 561 photographs and becoming the adopted family of a feral black-and-white cat. Inspired by Vandaveer’s track “Good Morning,” the resulting video artwork documents the dialog between the sign, the song lyrics and the motorists making their daily commute along New Circle Road, one of Lexington’s major mortorways.”